Atlanta has been one of the Southeast's major entertainment hubs since the late 1960s. It was home to some of the first large-scale rock festivals, and it has always been an important stop for any significant touring act.
Along the way, Georgia has spawned its own regional scenes as well, from early 1970s Southern rock gods like the Allman Brothers to the New Wave boom in Athens in the early 1980s (REM, B-52s, etc.) to today's explosion in hip-hop and R&B, Atlanta is home to some of the hottest producers in the business, and that in turn has spurred many bands to call the area home, and clubs and recording studios have sprung up to accommodate the influx of creative types.
Not surprisingly, there are numerous sound reinforcement companies in the area competing for work in what has become one of the most active entertainment centers in the country. One mid-size operation that has been around for more than 30 years, weathered many changes in the market and always managed to keep moving forward is Atlanta Sound & Lighting. ASL general manager Scott Waterbury notes, "One of my partners had visited SIR [Studio Instrument Rentals] in L.A. back in the mid-1970s and thought, ‘You know, it would be cool to have something like that in Atlanta,' so that was the original focus of the company – doing rentals and backline. [That company was known as Soundz Music Atlanta.] I moved down here from Chicago in ‘78, which was about a year later, and then in ‘79 we incorporated," then increasingly moved into event production and sound reinforcement.
Organic Growth
"We were never really overly funded," Waterbury continues with a chuckle, "so the way we grew our inventory was, we'd have to buy two of something and later sell them to get three of something else, and then three would turn into five, and five would turn into 10, and then we'd sell 10 and buy something different; it grew naturally like that. Before long, too, we started building our own cabinets, but it seemed like we were better at using stuff than designing and building it, so we let designers and builders do that and we just started choosing whose equipment we wanted to use, and life got a lot easier."
Through the years, ASL branched off into many different areas, including large and small productions in every sized venue imaginable, from clubs to concert halls to legitimate theaters; complete SR and lighting for corporate events; custom installs in restaurants, clubs, houses of worship and other facilities; political events; multi-stage fairs; private parties and weddings; you name it. "I guess our mainstay is musical acts coming through town," Waterbury comments, "but we have guys that are interested and excited about all those other areas, so when they call up and need a problem solved – like if a restaurateur calls up, they get a guy who really understands restaurant problems and knows what we have that fixes that problem.
"One of the nice things about my company is that because we do so many things, and we're not 90 percent one thing and 10 percent something else, we're not completely dependent on one market. Like right now, when corporate is down, there are other markets that have been up for us. And it also helps that there is that ‘& Lighting' in our name. There are some tours where lighting is extremely important and ‘Oh, by the way, they need a sound system,' and others where the sound has be impeccable and ‘Yeah, if the lights would move that would be cool,'" he laughs. "Clients have all these different objectives, and what we've gotten good at is understanding what their vision really is and then helping them forge a path that cost-effectively takes care of that."
Not Just About the Gear
ASL is the rare SR and lighting company that doesn't trumpet their massive gear collection on the their website (atlantasoundandlight.com) because, Waterbury says, "We're not about the equipment any more. About four years ago we threw away the price book and it's nothing to do with gear. It's all about the end result and the service people want to get. So we just buy stuff we believe in and then people hire us because they believe in us. Yes, it makes a difference what gear you have, but that's not what makes the difference. The difference is the attitude and the effort that the techs bring with them to the table."
That said, the folks at ASL are happy to talk gear and pride themselves in keeping a broad range of well-maintained equipment for any application. They also have some favorites, as Waterbury explains: "A number for years ago, my rep at Electro-Voice looked at me and said, ‘You've got something like 160 lines you're handling – five different power amps and 70 different speaker manufacturers; all these others. You divide your sales by 160 and to each guy you're 1/160th of a good customer. But if you spend a lot of your money with E-V, we'll think you're a pretty big deal.' It sounded like salesman stuff to me, but honestly, it changed my life. It turned out that E-V had something as good or better than anything I was buying from all these different companies. So instead of having a low-line contact from one company and talking to that rep, and a mid-line contact at another, and so on, E-V had everything from a mom and pop PA-on-a-stick to full-blown stadium stuff, and everything in between. So it's been really good for us. We actually feel like E-V helped us grow, and in a small part we probably helped them grow, too.
"I've got an X-Array system, and I've also got 30 or 40 ZXA1s – this teeny, eight-pound speaker, which people really seem to love. I've got Tour X, I've got Sx250 systems, I've got XLD, XLE, XLC. When EV was doing Dynacord, I got Dynacord Cobra and XA systems. It's worked out really well for us to stick with one high quality company instead of bouncing around and trying mix and match. Their gear is engineered to work together; it's fantastic."
Going Digital
When it comes to consoles, ASL's higher end inventory is still based largely around beloved analog Midas XL200 and Heritage desks, but recently they took the plunge into the digital realm when they purchased the highly-touted Midas PRO3, which was just announced at InfoComm this past year. Waterbury says that ASL had bought digital boards from "the usual suspects" in the past, but didn't feel that they were the sonic or ergonomic match of their popular analog boards. The PRO3 changes that, he believes.
ASL currently has 12 full-time and 44 part-time employees, with most of the latter group encompassing "specialty guys," Waterbury says. "We have someone who makes custom enclosures or adapts enclosures to environments for us; somebody else does rigging; somebody else knows about motors. We try to let people who really excel at something excel at that area, rather than forcing them to be good at something they don't enjoy. We have a ‘Don't take the fun out of it' attitude. We've got great jobs; we get paid to have a lot of fun."
And they've developed a solid foothold in a still-growing metropolitan market. "We're fortunate in that this little cubby hole of the United States has been very good to us," Waterbury offers. "Most of our guys are married and/or have children and while we will tour and do tour, it's really not our mainstay. There's enough work right here in our backyard that we don't have to be going more than 200 to 300 miles for work. This level is working out really well for us."
